Barcelona hosted the launch of PRECISEU, a huge project in the Horizon Europe program, which seeks to create an interregional ecosystem in the field of personalized medicine and advanced therapies. The initiative has 25 participating members from 12 European regions from 10 member states, as well as Ukraine. Catalonia stands out as the region with the most partners, with Biocat as the coordinator -from its headquarters in the Barcelona Science Park- in addition to the Department of Health, ACCIÓ, the Barcelona Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS) and AstraZeneca. 

PRECISEU (Personalised Medicine Empowerment Connecting Innovation Ecosystems Across Europe) is  one of the 5 winning projects in the competitive Regional Innovation Valleys (RIV) call of the European Innovation Ecosystems (EIE) programme, for which the European Commission has allocated a total of €54 M, and the only call in this field.

The project has a budget of almost €23 M for the next five years. Half of it is coming from the European Commission, and the other half from the budgets of the European regions participating in it: 25 partners from 12 regions in 10 member states (Spain, Germany, Belgium, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, Lithuania, Sweden, the Netherlands and Greece) and one country associated with the Horizon Europe program (Ukraine).

Catalonia is the region with the most partners participating in this project, which is coordinated by Biocat (the organization that promotes the health innovation ecosystem in Catalonia). Biocat is joined by the Department of Health, ACCIÓ (Agency for Business Competitiveness), the Barcelona Supercomputing Center – Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC CNS) and AstraZeneca, a company which recently moved to Catalonia.

PRECISEU has begun in July 2024 and will last until 30 June 2029. This week, the first meeting was held in Barcelona, with 50 attendees representing the 25 consortium partners; the mission of the gathering was to finish up defining and agreeing on all the activities included in the project’s nine working packages.

Public presentation of the project at the Palau de la Generalitat

The agenda of this internal meeting included the public presentation of the project, which was held today at the Palau de la Generalitat and brought together authorities, more than 100 professionals in the sector and representatives of the PRECISEU partners, signalling the start of one of the most ambitious European projects in this field.

The president of the Government of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, during the presentation of the project | Photography: Biocat.

The president of the Government of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, along with the health minister, Manel Balcells, attended the event along with other prominent authorities. In the words of the acting head of the Executive, projects like this one “are the best example of why investing in science is the best way to improve people’s lives,” given that “science is first and foremost a tool to serve people.”

Aragonès celebrated the fact that Catalonia is leading a globally cutting-edge project “that will contribute to decisively speeding up the implementation of personalized medicine around Europe.” Furthermore, he believes that the future of medicine lies in “adapting treatments to each person, to each of us according to our needs,” he added.

The president closed his speech by thanking everyone, especially Biocat, which has made it possible “for Catalonia to be at the forefront of research and life science and healthcare, and for making it possible for us to lead such an important European project as PRECISEU.” Then, the minister of Health, Manel Balcells, added that PRECISEU “will position Catalonia as one of the most representative healthcare innovation ecosystems in Europe.”

The representative of DG RTD, European Commission, Jekaterina Novikova, also spoke to congratulate the PRECISEU consortium for having been one of the five winning projects in the competitive RIV call of the European Commission’s European Innovation Ecosystems program, and the first to have signed the agreement with the European Commission to launch the project.

Montse Daban, the project coordinator and director of Strategic Analysis and International Relations at Biocat, took the floor to explain how PRECISEU will work to ensure that personalized medicine reaches patients. “For the next five years, we’ll identify the organizations working in personalized medicine in the 12 European regions that are part of the PRECISEU program in order to make these treatments reach patients from a market perspective.”

Once PRECISEU had officially been launched, two panel discussions were held. The first one, led by Javier Adrián, head of European Projects Office at ACCIÓ, was on RIVs from the perspective of the regions participating in PRECISEU. The participants in this discussion were Jekaterina Kaliniene, head of Biotech Lab at Innovation Agency Lithuania; Angelica Laterza, project manager at RER; Ramon Maspons, director of Strategy and Health Innovation in the Department of Health; and Katerina Rousaki, Project Manager at PERIFEREIA.

The second session was entitled Personalized Medicine and included representatives of the EP PerMed and PRECISEU. It was moderated by Núria Radó, senior projectleader at Biocat. The participants were Toni Andreu, scientific director at EATRIS; Alba Jené, Life Sciences coordinator at BSC; Gianni d’Errico, EP PerMed; and Josep Samitier, director of the IBEC.

Snapshot of the second round table of the day, with the participation of Josep Samitier, director of IBEC | Photography: Biocat.

» For further information: Biocat website [+]